The best long-term prescription for our health care crisis is to do all we can to prevent people from becoming ill in the first place.

Medical care wasn't designed to create health—it was designed to treat people once they're already sick. That's why the medical care we receive accounts for only one quarter of our health. Science shows that our wellbeing is shaped more by where we live, grow, work and age. Canada's ever-growing medical care budgets are crowding out this social spending that makes us healthy, especially when it comes to investments in younger generations.

To help reach our goal, we're leading Get Well Canada, an alliance to invest where health begins, together with Think Upstream, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, the National Collaborating Centre for Determinants of Health, and health researchers from the University of Calgary and Dalhousie University.

Canadians will “Get Well” when we invest in safe and affordable homes, living wages, quality child care and schools, and a healthy environment—even more urgently than we invest in medical care. It’s time to grow spending on social supports to reduce pressure on our medical system and tackle our affordability crisis. This is the best strategy to make Canadians happier, healthier, wealthier and more resilient for generations to come.

Growing these social investments will promote wellbeing for all ages, reducing the generational tensions created by escalating medical spending.

Our comprehensive solutions framework to Invest Where Health Begins is a roadmap for promoting wellbeing from the early years onwards.